China’s Baidu Plans to Launch Autonomous Vehicles in Three Years

In the global race for self-driving cars, a new entrant, Chinese search giant Baidu Inc., is putting the proverbial pedal to the metal. A Baidu executive tells The Wall Street Journal's Gillian Wong that the company often called the Google of China has set an ambitious goal of launching autonomous vehicles for use as shuttles in some urban areas within three years.

Baidu also said Thursday its prototype autonomous car successfully completed test drives on a 30-kilometer route from the company's headquarters in northern Beijing. The route takes the car on a highway and onto the Fifth Ring Road, past the Olympic Park and then back to headquarters. The route requires the car to make turns, keep a safe distance behind vehicles in front of it, change lanes and pass other cars if needed, Baidu says.

Like Google, Baidu has big ambitions to use its mapping data and “deep-learning” technology—in which computers simulate the brain in learning from massive amounts of data—to expand its scope well beyond online search.